The E.R. Presents: Lawfare and FP’s Bar Review Live

Has the role of the White House counsel drastically changed in the time of Trump?

On this episode of The E.R., Max Boot joins us to discuss his new book "The Road Not Taken."

On this week’s first episode of The E.R, host Ben Pauker joins Lawfare’s Susan Hennessey and Ben Wittes for a live taping to discuss the past and present of serving as White House Counsel with Bob Bauer and A.B. Culvahouse, two men who have held the job under very different administrations. The panel ruminates on Bauer and Culvahouse’s experiences defending the most powerful client on the planet, and discusses what might be in store for current White House Counsel Don McGahn.

With multiple indictments looming, including that of Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, are the legal challenges facing the Trump administration really all that different from those faced by previous administrations?

Bob Bauer is an attorney who previously served as White House Counsel in the Obama administration. He was general counsel to Obama for America in 2008 and 2012. In 2013, he was appointed co-chair of the presidential commission on election administration, and is general counsel for the democratic national committee. He is currently a Partner at Perkins Coie LLP.

A.B. Culvahouse served as White House Counsel in the last two years of the Reagan administration, advising the president on matters ranging from the Iran contra investigations, Supreme Court nominations, and the legal aspects of nuclear missile treaties with the Soviet Union. He also chaired the Inter-agency Lawyers Committee on War Powers, and the President’s Committee on Federal Judicial Nominations.

Susan Hennessey is managing editor of Lawfare and general counsel of the Lawfare Institute. She is a Brookings fellow in national security law. Prior to joining Brookings, she was an attorney in the Office of General Counsel of the National Security Agency. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of California, Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter: @Susan_Hennessey.

Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books and is co-chair of the Hoover Institution’s Working Group on National Security, Technology, and Law. Follow him on Twitter at: @benjaminwittes.